Caves are fascinating places, if not a little creepy - the odd formations which grow inside them can make you feel like you've wandered into some sort of giant plasticine world or a landscape full of vastly oversized half melted cake decorations.

The Princess Margaret Rose caves near Nelson on the Victorian / South Australian border aren't huge, but they do, apparently, contain the highest concentration of cave formations per square meter of any Australian cave.

You certainly have to be careful when walking through the space - the formations protrude from the floor and hang from the ceiling pretty much everywhere you look.

David Holdsworth is one of the Managers and as he explains, at 800,000 years old it's 'not very old' in cave terms, but he does point out it's a very 'healthy' cave and also a 'wet' cave.

You can certainly feel the moisture as you make your way down the steep stairs to the start of the cave, and many of the formations, certainly at the moment, constantly have water dripping from them.

Interestingly enough the water dripping from the formations today has taken around six months to filter through from the ground above, so depending on what the weather was like six months ago the caves can either be very damp or reasonably dry.

The formation highlights are many but include a stalagmite and stalactite with just a five centimeter gap between them - apparently they grow at the rate of about one centimeter per 100 years so it'll be another 500 years before they finally meet.

Elsewhere you can see a petrified tree branch which was washed into the cave in a flood many years ago, and all manner of oddly lumpy formations and columns which have literally taken thousands and thousands of years to form.

The caves are open seven days a week, and there are several tours each day with each tour lasting around 40 minutes.